In the complex modern world, people's understanding of how things work is often outsourced to other people. We explore how people's perceptions of expert causal understanding of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic predicted their pandemic-related behaviors. As part of a larger longitudinal study, we collected data at four time points that measured participants' perceptions of experts' causal understanding of COVID-19, along with those participants' self-reported pandemic-related health behaviors. We found that perceiving experts to understand the causal mechanism of transmission was predictive of engaging in more social distancing, advice following, hand washing, and mask wearing. Believing experts could intervene and treat the symptoms or underlying cause of COVID-19 was negatively associated with these same behaviors, but to a lesser degree. These results held above and beyond political ideology and were overall similar for people who perceived themselves to be at high or low risk for COVID-19. This research provides new insights into how people's behaviors are guided by perceptions of others' understanding and highlights important implications for expert health-risk communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

带出你的专家：感知的专家因果理解与流行病行为之间的关系。

在复杂的现代世界中，人们对事物如何运作的理解往往外包给其他人。我们探讨了人们对专家对冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 大流行的因果理解的看法如何预测他们与大流行相关的行为。作为一项更大的纵向研究的一部分，我们在四个时间点收集了数据，这些数据测量了参与者对专家对 COVID-19 因果理解的看法，以及这些参与者自我报告的与流行病相关的健康行为。我们发现，了解传播因果机制的感知专家预示着更多的社会距离、建议遵循、洗手和戴口罩。相信专家可以干预和治疗 COVID-19 的症状或根本原因与这些相同的行为呈负相关，但程度较轻。这些结果超越了政治意识形态，对于那些认为自己处于 COVID-19 高风险或低风险的人来说，总体上是相似的。这项研究为人们的行为如何受他人理解的感知引导提供了新的见解，并强调了专家健康风险沟通的重要意义。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。